Elon Musk replaces Jeff Bezos as richest American

This year’s deep technology rout has shaken up the personal fortunes of the wealthiest billionaires in the United States. Musk’s fortune rose by $US60.5bn; Bezos was down $US50bn.

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

Elon Musk has knocked Jeff Bezos off the top of a closely watched annual list of the richest Americans for the first time in four years.

The Tesla and SpaceX boss, who is locked in a legal battle with Twitter over his soured $US44bn takeover bid, led the Forbes 400 as the wealthiest billionaires in the United States were hit by stock market turbulence.

Musk’s fortune rose by $US60.5bn to $US251bn in the year to September, boosted by Tesla’s higher share price and another private fundraising for SpaceX.

Mr Bezos, the executive chairman of Amazon, saw his fortune decline by $US50bn to $US151bn.

The top five also included Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, Larry Ellison, the Oracle co-founder and executive chairman, and Warren Buffett, the famed stockpicker.

Mr Musk also leads The Boring Company, a tunnelling business, and Neuralink, a venture developing brain microchips. His attempt to walk away from an agreed acquisition of Twitter this year paved the way for a court trial due to begin next month.

Elon Musk speaks during a press conference at SpaceX's Starbase facility near Boca Chica Village in South Texas.

This year’s deep technology rout knocked Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook and chief executive of Meta Platforms, out of the list’s top 10 for the first time since 2015.

His personal fortune more than halved during the course of the year from $US134.5bn to $US57.7bn, as shares in Meta came under sustained pressure.

While Tesla’s shares were hit hard at the start of the sell-off, almost halving from their record high last year, they staged a partial recovery this summer.

Making the cut for this year’s Forbes 400 rankings required a minimum fortune of $US2.7bn. The threshold fell for the first time since the financial crisis, down by $US200m from last year’s record $US2.9bn.

Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo, did not make the list for the first time in a quarter of a century. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the twins who founded the cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, also fell out of the rankings, along with Noubar Afeyan, co-founder of Moderna, and RJ Scaringe, the boss of Rivian Automotive.

Donald Trump, the former US president, returned to the list after failing to make the cut in 2021. With an estimated paper fortune of $US3.2bn, he was ranked at 343.

The Times